Bug 653081

Is updating the terminfo entry in F13 and F14 really necessary? It seems that only the number of supported color pairs has changed recently, this shouldn't cause any problems.

Also, we are still using a very old version of the entry, because the new ones have some problems with screen. It would be nice to fix it first before the entry is updated.

Hm, it is explicitly mentioned int he changelog [1]:

9.09 Sat Nov 13 01:39:07 CET 2010
	- NOTICE: this release updates terminfo/termcap.


Could you elaborate on the problems with screen and what needs to be fixed? I need to contact upstream anyway because of libev. Maybe we can clarify this.


[1] - http://dist.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/Changes

The relevant changelog entries seem to be:
- update rxvt-unicode terminfo to state 7744 colour pairs to cover all 88*88 possible pairs.
- add rxvt-unicode-256color terminfo and use it by default in 256 colors mode.

The first one is minor and probably doesn't warrant an ncurses update.

But the second one will be a problem. We can add the new entry in F13 and F14, but there are other systems which won't have it anytime soon and users connecting via ssh will be getting unknown terminal errors. Interestingly, screen doesn't work with rxvt-unicode-256color at all, it exits with "$TERM too long - sorry.", looks like a screen bug.

If possible, I'd suggest to not use the 256color entry by default, at least for a while, before it has a chance to spread a bit.

The problem with screen is when detaching/exiting, the original content of terminal is not resumed properly. I suspect this is caused by one of the changes in the initializations strings.

Thanks for the feedback.

The terminfo files are included in the package as doc so people can install/copy/... them to system where they are not available by default. However I will try to contact the maintainers in the other distros and try to coordinate this a bit. I will also try to contact upstream and get a statement as to the problems you pointed out.

Gentoo[1] has already included the new terminfo file an I have talked to upstream about it as well. The one from 9.09 should be good to get included into ncurses.

The too long problem is a screen bug.

Could you be more precise with the screen bugs (maybe open up a seperate bug against urxvt) so I can track the problems upstream can verify things?

I can reproduce the screen problem with:
start screen
start mutt (or irssi or any fullscreen application)
exit mutt
exit screen

The terminal is now corrupted, there are parts of mutt visible.

But we can fix this later. If you feel strongly about using the 256color entry by default, I think we can make an update which will just add the new rxvt-unicode-256color entry.

BTW, it would be really nice if urxvt upstream worked with ncurses upstream to get the entries included in the ncurses database.

Hm I tried with mcabber which seems to work just fine here.

256color will not be the default.

I have split the rxvt-unicode package to provide four versions (somewhat like debian):

- standard (rxvt-unicode)
- multi-language support (rxvt-unicode-ml)
- 256color version (rxvt-unicode-256color)
- 256color multi-language (rxvt-unicode-256color-ml)

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=205202

Aside from that it would be great to include it into ncurses.

It's probably not a "bug in screen".  For instance, the name given
is longer than the standard 14-characters, and would be a nuisance.
I've grudgingly accepted a few obscure entries which don't comply.
It won't happen upstream for something that's used frequently.

I've a to-do to check over the latest entry, but infocmp lists
60 differences between my reference copy and urxvt's.  So there's
some adjustments which its maintainer would have to agree to before
I'd add it to ncurses.

hmm - reviewing, there are several longer than 14 (some of
the "screen" variations for example).  The longest currently
is 21 characters, matching the length of this.  (I prefer
urxvt-256color of course, for the above-stated reason).

There are still a lot of differences between my reference copy
and urxvt's.

I'd be nice to stay compatible between distros. Gentoo has already included the terminfo shipped with 9.09: http://sourcestest.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/sys-libs/ncurses/ncurses-5.7-r6.ebuild?view=log.

Could you elaborate more on the differences you are talking about?

The majority of the difference is that it's not defining
the modified keys, e.g., as I've done in ncurses for several
years for terminals that support them (shift, control, etc.).
There are also some settings that are incorrect.

(ultimately, rxvt-unicode's maintainer should discuss those
differences - as I noted earlier, politely and accurately -
there's no point in my adding a corrected version of the
entry if he's not willing to own it in his code).

Did you discuss these problems with upstream?

I read his response early this year, saw no difference from
for instance

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=265631

There's not much to work with.

rxvt-unicode-256color terminfo will be included with rxvt-unicode for now.

The rxvt-unicode entry was updated to the latest version in ncurses-5.7-9.20101128.fc15.